[spectre] exh. Bolognini in Genova/IT

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce 
Via Jacopo Ruffini 3 - 16128 Genova Tel. +39 010 585772 - 010 580069; 
fax +39 010 532482
E-mail museocroce at comune.genova.it www.museovillacroce.it

8 - 26 June 2005


Maurizio Bolognini
Infinity out of control. Programmed Machines, 1990-2005


As part of "4 Rooms", a series of exhibitions at the Villa Croce 
Museum of Contemporary Art that has already seen the first two 
sections by Plamen Dejanoff and Flavio Favelli, Maurizio Bolognini 
presents his exhibition "Programmed Machines, 1990-2005", a selection 
of his most significant works, including his first computers 
programmed to produce flows of random images and left to work 
indefinitely: Imaging Machines and Computer sigillati (1988 and 1992, 
respectively).
Maurizio Bolognini, who has been working with digital technologies 
since the 1980s, is considered the most radical artist in the New 
Technology movement, having focused his work on devices and their 
physiology, and doing away with any symbolic superstructure (Mario 
Costa). The artist himself emphasises that his machines (by now there 
are hundreds of them), programmed to produce continuous flows of 
random images (or other kinds of processing: numerations, texts, 
voices, etc.), serve to generate "out-of-control infinities", and to 
create parallel universes of information, thus moving research "from 
the level of meanings to that of the devices and their operations" - 
in relation to which he stands as both maker and spectator.
It has been underlined that Bolognini's work makes it possible to 
refocus on the problematic of art within the new technological 
context (Robert C. Morgan). The artist considers the element of 
"delegating to the machine" central to his research, which means 
giving up control but also making it possible to expand gestures to 
infinity: the "disproportion" which is created between the artist and 
his work - he underlines - "becomes a new version of the 
disproportion between us and reality, which for the first time we can 
contemplate, reducing it to an experiment and a show".
This is evident in many of his works: in the Computer sigillati 
series, which Villa Croce also presented in an installation in the 
show "Il viaggio dell'uomo immobile" (2003); in the Atlas 2 series, 
where he uses software whose design has been delegated to programmers 
from different countries; in the artificial intelligence applications 
used in AIMS (Artificial Intelligence Mediated Sublime); and in the 
collective intelligence applications used in the CIMs (Collective 
Intelligence Machines), interactive installations connected to the 
mobile telephone network. One of these latter is presented at this 
exhibition. It is an installation located at two different sites (one 
inside the Museum itself and the other in a street in the centre of 
Genoa), coordinated across the phone network and allowing the public, 
using their own mobile phones, to interfere with the otherwise 
self-sufficient functioning of his programmed machines.

On the occasion of the exhibition Villa Croce has bought one of the 
artist's installations, made up of two programmed machines, for its 
own collection.

Published by Neos, the catalogue (in Italian and English) has been 
edited by Sandra Solimano and contains texts by Mario Costa, Giulio 
Giorello, Derrick de Kerckhove, Simonetta Lux, Angela Madesani, 
Robert C. Morgan, Enrico Pedrini, Domenico Scudero and Sandra 
Solimano.     


Opening hours:
Tuesday - Friday 9 am - 7 pm; Saturday and Sunday 10 am - 7 pm; Closed Mondays






Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce 
Via Jacopo Ruffini 3 - 16128 Genova Tel. +39 010 585772 - 010 580069; 
fax +39 010 532482
E-mail museocroce at comune.genova.it www.museovillacroce.it